Nuclear Plant Question Won't Be On Montco Ballot

A referendum on whether the operation of Unit 1 of the Limerick nuclear power plant is in the public interest will not appear on the Montgomery County ballot on Nov. 5.

A motion to hold the non-binding referendum was made yesterday by Democratic Commissioner Rita C. Banning. However, neither of the two Republicans on the three-member board seconded it, and the motion died.

About a dozen angry plant opponents threatened and berated Chairman Paul B. Bartle and fellow GOP Commissioner Allan C. Myers. A leader of the plant opponents vowed to campaign for a referendum next May.

"I guess what you just said to the voters of this county is no more Mr. Nice Guy," Val Sigstedt, president of CANCEL (Council Against the Nuclear Costs of Electricity at Limerick), said to Bartle. "I guess your hurricane is going to come to this county a day early. You just started it."

CANCEL, an umbrella organization of nine groups opposed to the plant, proposed the referendum in July. Since then, it has been circulating petitions calling for the ballot question.

The episode began when Myers, who is chairman of the county Election Board, said the board was able to verify only 2,020 of the 3,314 signatures on the petitions.

Of the difference, Myers said, some signers are not registered county voters and 256 signatures arrived too late to be verified. There are 332,225 registered voters in the county, he said.

Myers then asked whether there was a motion to place the referendum on the ballot.

When Banning moved for a referendum, however, neither Myers nor Bartle seconded her motion, thereby killing it.

"I could see no real value in it in the first place," Myers said, "and, in the second place, I was not impressed by the numbers. I was elected by 76,000 people, and I think I have the pulse of those people."

Bartle said he is philosophically opposed to referendums because they are "popular opinion polls" that circumvent the representative form of government.

"I do not believe that referendums should be on the ballot without a compelling reason to the contrary, and I do not see a compelling reason," he said.

Banning, however, said a referendum would combat apathy by giving voters a chance to express their opinions and, in the process, think about the issue. "One of our biggest problems is apathy," Banning said.

Sigstedt, one of 10 people to condemn Myers and Bartle's actions, said participatory democracy has a long tradition in the United States and is needed to break the "Siberian calm" of representative government.

"This has become a matter of grave concern to the community at large," Sigstedt said about unit 1, which the Philadelphia Electric Co. is testing at 50 percent power.

In particular, Sigstedt said, operation of unit 1 has become "a woman's issue" because an accident at the plant could cost women their homes, an event he compared to the Old Testament story of Ammonites throwing babies into a brazen hearth as a sacrifice to the god Molech. Sigstedt said women are responsible for two-thirds of the petition's signatures.

CANCEL official William Collins harangued Myers and Bartle while standing directly in front of them, disregarding Bartle's instructions to return to his seat. "You're on the way out," Collins shouted. "You represent PECO in the five-county (Philadelphia) area. . .That referendum question is going to be your political ephithet."

Bartle adjourned the meeting when the Limerick opponents became unruly and began shouting insults.